The Women's Marathon event is scheduled for this Sunday, and the USA Olympic Team will be well represented this Sunday. Despite losing one of it's stars, the race is looking to be the most competitive in Olympic history. The US representatives include Desiree Davila, Kara Goucher and US Olympic Trial winner Shalane Flanagan who is a favorite to medal in London.

Distance running has been a part of the Games since 1896, but this year’s Olympic Marathon will only be the 8th in the history of the Games where women are allowed to compete. The women’s race debuted in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Just ten years earlier, women were running before and after daylight to avoid public scrutiny. It was widely believed that women who ran more than a mile would grow facial hair, their uteruses would fall out, and worst of all, risked death. In 1966, Roberta Gibb hid behind a bush at the start line of the prestigious Boston Marathon and snuck onto the course, finishing the race and proving women were capable of the completing the marathon. Despite Gibb’s efforts, the Boston Athletic Association continued to ban women from competing in the marathon until 1972. Today, women’s participation has exponentially increased, with women representing 41% of marathon finishers in the United States in 2011.

Twenty-eight years after American Joan Benoit won the first women’s Olympic marathon gold medal in Los Angeles, the world’s greatest distance runners will face off in what is to be the deepest field of women to ever toe the line. Unfortunately this year current world record holder Paula Radcliffe (GBR) is out of the race due to a foot injury. She will be missed, but the fact remains that Radcliffe’s record proves that women’s distance running has evolved rapidly. Only forty-five years ago, Maureen Wilton (CAN) set the world record at 3:15:23, an entire hour slower than Radcliffe’s current record.